Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

Simon Throckmorton’s father, a younger brother of Sir George Throckmorton, settled at Higham Ferrers, where he was steward for the duchy of Lancaster; he was also duchy receiver for Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties. Of Throckmorton’s own career little has been discovered. It must have been an older namesake who was practising as an attorney in 1520, probably the member of the Suffolk family who died in 1527. Throckmorton is not known to have held office of any kind, but whereas his eldest brother became a groom of the chamber and receiver of Kenilworth and the other two were bailiffs for the Cromwell family, there is little doubt that he attached himself to Sir Robert Tyrwhitt I. It was in 1550, two years after Tyrwhitt’s purchase of Leighton Bromswold, that Throckmorton bought Fosters manor in Brampton, which he was to make his home; lying on the outskirts of Huntingdon, it was equidistant from Leighton Bromswold and Kimbolton, of which Tyrwhitt was custodian. Throckmorton’s two elections to Parliament clearly reflect Tyrwhitt’s patronage: on both occasions Tyrwhitt himself sat for the shire and on the first Throckmorton had as his fellow-Member Tyrwhitt’s stepson Thomas Maria Wingfield. Both were to disappear from the Commons after 1559, when despite his Protestantism Tyrwhitt was out of favour with the new Queen; there seems to be no means of judging whether Throckmorton was of the same religious persuasion. At his death on 27 Mar. 1585 he was succeeded by his 37 year-old son Robert.2